Tanta Stultitia Mortalium Est
by Raccoon48
Summary: :What Fools These Mortals Be:  Halloween A/R . Beware the world outside your lights, for there two timeless creatures make the night their own.


**A/N: **Actually wrote this about two years ago and never thought it was good enough to submit, but upon re-discovering it I've decided it's worth putting up because I was so proud of it for a while. Let us ignore the current prevailing view of "sparkly" vampires.

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**Tanta Stultitia Mortalium Est**

_What Fools These Mortals Be_

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The little town is afraid to make its presence known at night. Soon after the sun sinks the houses fall silent, giving over dominance of the darkness to creatures unseen. Locked inside their comfortable bricked boxes, they are ignorant and fearful of the happenings of the outside night. Crooked trees make strange shapes in gardens, clouds smother the shining moon and suspicious, quickly-stifled noises echo across the valley. The residents draw their curtains against the unknown.

The few houses dotted about the bottom of the quiet hills are on the very outskirts of the whispering town. The hills are covered by thin, scraggly trees, the dirt below dry and dusty. A quiet, but chilly wind blowing through the wilderness hardly stirs a leaf. Tonight, the moon is covered absolutely, and so few spots of light glimmer from the residences that when a creature stalks lithely past the dark houses on two slender limbs, he cannot be seen by a soul. This is one of the many times he has crept down from the surrounding forest.

The mysterious being slinks past a particular house, a bit too close, perhaps; only just out of reach of the probing light from the windows, and with a jolt he senses the close proximity of a human. His head jerks to the side, defensive, and he sees the small figure; a young man contentedly seated in his overgrown back garden. The boy is gazing unblinkingly at a swaying tree some ten feet in front of him. He is utterly still. He is never anything _but _utterly still.

He has seen the boy there before, sitting motionless on the outside bench; feeble candlelight spilling from the back door just barely reaching the hunched shoulders. He has never considered him for prey, thinking the boy hardly large enough for a worthy meal, though many nights when he has skulked past this residence he has worried that the boy has caught sight of him through the darkness, with his staring, staring eyes. And once, when his carnivore canines were tearing through the muscle of some prey – human, animal, or something else entirely, what did it matter – he had even thought for a moment about the lonely character. A miniscule pondering, no more; it crossed his mind and was forgotten in an instant. He wondered why the boy was so often out there, night after night, when it was dark and sometimes raining; whether he had a family, a mother and father under that little roof; whether it was because of them. He had some small idea of the troubles of humans. Then his raging mind flicked over, like a train changing tracks, back to the task at hand – blood. Thick, sweet, gratifying blood.

Tonight the need for sustenance is greater than usual, it seems. The hunger boils away in every part of him, driving his every step. Strangely enough, then, it is this night he ventures into the back garden; on a whim, without a planned attack; no premeditation whatsoever, just a sort of predatory curiosity. It is though he is powerless to stop his own striding footsteps.

The boy, young, he knows, sees him approach. He is buttoned into a dark, casual suit, collar and tie stiffly centered about his throat. The jacket is straight, the trousers without a single crease... in fact, with his emotionless face and upright posture, the boy looks as though he is a priceless doll, positioned with purpose in that seat by some loving, invisible child. Hands posed perfectly by his sides on the white stone bench, the dull empty gaze locks onto the creature as it slips past the undernourished plants without a sound.

Every step further into the flickering light reveals in more detail the creature's face. Grey, papery skin. Slick black hair blending into a dark unusual red at the ends. A slight protrusion around the lips, as though trying to fit something a bit too large in the thing's mouth. Faint black smudges below the eyes, long, curling eyelashes – and oh, the _eyes_. Almost pupil-less, shining an unmistakeably inhuman bright yellow-green, and what looks like thick eye-makeup around the corners, but is probably something else more telling of his particular species.

When he stands before the boy, tall, proud, his magnificent ruffled shirtsleeves and velvet jacket utterly dwarfing the boy's simple suit, the child merely looks up at him with a detached awareness. There is no fear in his eyes, though he must know what the demon creature is.

Intrigued, he reaches out a pale, sallow-skinned hand and rests it against the boy's ice cold cheek. He wonders how the youth can stand to sit out in the dead of winter like this, warm-blooded thing that he is. The boy shows no reaction to the contact except to blink slowly, gazing into the monster's glowing green eyes. The slight wind lifts the boy's wispy blonde hair and it blows across his face. He breathes, calm, in and out again, the motion felt significantly by the sharp, clawed fingers suddenly gripping his shoulder. Overcome by a strange desire, the creature leans down, tries to place a chaste, curious kiss on the silent boy's lips – but the proximity of this potential prey is quickly overwhelming; razor-sharp teeth slicing effortlessly through the boy's perfect lips.

The boy reacts a bit then, his eyes widening in pain and surprise, ruined mouth stretching in a silent gasp; yet he does not attempt to move, fingers merely clutching instinctively at the stone under him. The man-who-is-not-a-man stands still, transfixed by the sight of the blank-faced, beautiful child. Blood drips heavily, temptingly from the chin. He kneels, bends forward, his mouth inches from the boy's smooth cheek, and inhales. The blood scent is dizzyingly sweet...

Before the boy's heart has a chance to thump its last, hopeful beat, the vampire strikes; sinking his teeth deep into the boy's neck. He restrains with claws, sucks, rips; loses sentience. In seconds the boy lies dead in the wild garden, eyes still staring, strangely no duller than they had been in life. His clean, shining blonde locks lie prettily over bloodstained flesh. The violent undead creature has reduced his youthful body to a collection of mismatched body parts; hands, fingers, a leg ripped clean off, beautiful face cleaved in two. The pieces lie jumbled together, the flesh deathly pale. Of course. No coloured liquid left in the veins to make it otherwise – except on the lips of his killer.

Who watches the remains for a long moment.

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He takes them to a man.

He doesn't know the man's name - who knows, maybe he does not possess one, but the tailor stitches the boy back together anyway, with threads as thick and gnarled as his own fingers. It takes a long time; all the muscles and bones and organs are complicated, says the man, difficult to rearrange and make serviceable again. There are times when he has to rest, the project stops, and the creature becomes impatient, scraping long nails over the man's machines with an eerie screech. The man warns that he cannot make the boy exactly the way he was, and the creature growls under his breath; flexes clawed fingers threateningly. The tailor keeps working. And one night, the creature watches with a sort of alien pleasure he isn't sure he's familiar with as the boy's limbs move once more. The dull grey eyes twitch, blink, swivel to rest on his murderer. His eyebrows, newly re-aligned, convulse slightly, and the creature fancies a look of confusion on the boy's face. Carnivore teeth bare in a smile.

He leaps through the abandoned night, owning it, pulling the boy along with him like a lifeless toy. The boy never speaks, never breathes a single sound, even when the vicious beast carves new gashes in his flesh; shreds his body into pieces anew; makes deep red blood seep through his stunning golden locks. The creature gets the nameless man to teach him how to sew the boy back together, so he can perform it whenever needed.

The vampire notices after some time (a few days, a few decades, what's the difference to him?), that the boy's eyes have begun to glow. No longer a dead grey haze, they shine a bright azure, swirling mixtures of light and dark around the wide irises; so luminescent he can even see them in the dark, dark of the night in which they continually dwell.

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Years later still, so many that even the boy has forgotten the once-existence of man, they lie together in a ruined and long-disused building, the immortal creature having killed whatever mutant inhabitants had been taking shelter there. Neither of the two has the ability to feel the bitter cold. The world is still, silent, and the boy turns to him – slow, slow – his captor decided some time ago that he is incapable of acting quickly. The boy curls into his bare chest, hypnotist eyes wide. His irreparably scarred, blood-stained lips part, trembling.

"Aa. Aa-a..."

"Trying to speak?" enquires the creature curiously, looking down at the boy with mild surprise. This is the first time he thinks he has heard the blonde form a sound comparable to language. He traces a sharp nail over his face, across a long uneven line crumpled inwards, held in place by threads punched haphazardly into the discoloured skin. The bridge of the boy's nose is forever crushed; an eye irreversibly clouded with dust and bloody veins branching out from the cerulean iris. It fascinates him to examine these disfigurements.

"A-Axe," the boy whispers softly. "Axe."

With a slight smile, delight lightening his usually stony features, the vampire says, "That's not my –"

"_Axe_," the boy insists, childishly defensive of his new achievement.

The green eyes soften. Glancing over the cracked and twisted face once more, he thinks of all the thousands and thousands of times he has chopped him into tiny pieces, and, "Close enough," he accepts with a wide smile, and presses a faithful kiss to the boy's forehead.

"Close enough, doll."

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Inspired a lot by this lovely artwork by Norikuu on DA: norikuu. deviantart. com/ art/ An-Akuroku-Halloween-67233246  
Might be attempting NaNoWriMo this year to get me back into writing, so please let me know if you liked this, it'll give me motivation! =D

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!


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